[ExI] Let's play What If.

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Thu Oct 28 00:57:53 UTC 2010


On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 3:53 AM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> On 10/27/2010 5:10 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>> As I understand your position this is
>> impossible: you think you will end up as the original with probability
>> 1 and as a copy with probability 0.
>
> Of course--in the situation you first proposed. Say I walk into a scanning
> station, lie down, get scanned, stand up and the team wave me off after a
> nice cup of tea. Then they settle down to cleaning up any glitches in the
> scan and begin running off either one or a million copies who coalesce in
> the copy tank/s. Surely you're not claiming that everyone gets really really
> confused at that point, including me, and forgets who the original was?

If the information is kept from you, you have no way of knowing
whether you are a copy or the original after the procedure. It might
have been done to you while you slept last night. It is what happens
naturally anyway as the result of normal metabolic processes. You'll
be gone in a year, replaced by a copy that looks like you and has your
memories. But even though you are now a copy, you have the illusion
that you are a unique individual persisting through time. Survival
consists in perpetuating this illusion.

>> So what do you think would happen
>> if the MWI is correct and there is no original?
>
> I have no idea. But that isn't the case you proposed, where someone (a
> original) is asked which of two copying procedures to authorize, each
> procedure entailing a horrendous consequence for one copy.

It is equivalent to the case I proposed because none of the copies or
original knows which is which, and even after they are told they all
feel they are the original. It is this fact that leads to the
subjective probabilities.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



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